First I’m sure many (if any at all) reading this blog only care about one thing: the star rating.
My star rating: ★ ★
Let me be clear, this rating is the highest I can find in my conscience to give them. In simpler words: I am being generous. If I wasn’t, it’d be a one and a half tops. Also I was staying in Room 105 which I HIGHLY ADVISE you change to some other room if you get it.
The hotel is situated in the center of Warwick (or at least it claims to be the center of town, heck if I know if it is or not) and is near Warwick Castle. It really is located smack bang on a busy road. My room was located at the front of the hotel and if a big lorry went by, you could feel and hear the place rumble (I am dead serious, it’s loud), however the nights tended to be quiet, as expected of main streets but for the 2 (horrific) nights I stayed there, each night there was at least 1 lorry going by so….RUMBLE RUMBLE. WAKE UP TIME, OH GOODY.
Not.
Of course while there are disadvantages such as the above of staying in the center of town, there are also (some) advantages. First of all, it gave easy access to those with a car by providing a (tiny but still squeezable through) carpark at the rear on a very busy double yellow line road (can’t stop). Of course if you flew down like I did, this car park provides little use except maybe to your taxi driver for dropping you off easily without having you lug your pieces of luggage through the street.
Secondly, dining was excellent. There are plenty of restaurants literally 5 minutes down OR up the street that you could take your pick from. There’s also a Lebanese restaurant right across from the hotel’s entrance if you fancy that. But yes, there’s a whole range of variety within a 15 minute walking distance of the hotel so you could pretty much have your choice of french, italian, british, thai, chinese, turkish or indian food. You can’t go hungry here. If you don’t know where to go, simply look up Smith Street on Google Maps. There’s at least 6-7 restaurants on that tiny street alone.
Thirdly, the decoration inside. The hotel was brightly lit (with a Christmas tree near reception too!) and had nice big and wide staircases and also a lift (for those who have exceptional luggage that cannot be dragged up stairs). There is a bar area near the front for drinks as well as some conference/lounge areas scattered about. Further to the left, past the mini lounge is the restaurant area where breakfast is served. Unfortunately (or fortunately) in our case, the restaurant does not serve dinner and breakfast is from 7-9am. Once again, I must compliment the decor for such a terrible hotel, it all looks very elegant and regal. We’re talking about a red/gold colour theme here, along with chandeliers and I must say it does fit the name of the hotel very well. The photos they have on their website about the hotel decor is not a lie. And if it wasn’t for the room, I would have totally recommended this place. Such a shame.
Now that we’ve talked about the hotel itself and outside the hotel, let’s move onto the main topic, the most important part of the hotel: the room itself.
Day 1 of Hotel Hell
[carousel – I’ll upload images when the internet is not terrible]
Looks pretty average isn’t it? Yes because it is average. No biggie, has a TV, a bathroom, a hair dryer, a kettle and a fairly big and comfortable bed. I can live with it.
So of course, as per usual. I go out and have my dinner (my pick for this night was The Art Kitchen which I’ll write about another time), come back and get ready to take a nice warm shower, wash my hair and maybe watch some TV/read a book before sleeping (since I had an early flight, I was pretty tired by this point). So I turn on the shower so it’ll warm up while I get my pyjamas and stuff.
15 minutes later, the shower is still running and the water is still cold.
What. The. Fuck.
So I went down to reception to get the girl to check the boiler. She came knocking on my door shortly and turned both the bath tub’s taps and the sink’s taps on full blast and told me the water was just taking a while to warm up. Okay fine, the tap water was starting to get warmer so I believed her.
20 minutes later, shower is still running and the water is still cold.
The fuck.
So I went down again and she said the plumbing was old and I should keep it running for longer.
Back up I go, holy shit. The water is now WARM. So I get ready to take a shower, go in for 2 minutes and HOLY SHIT, THE WATER TURNS COLD.
I am not talking about going colder from warm, I am talking about it going ICE COLD IN LESS THAN 10 SECONDS.
Fucking hell. Temperamental much shower? So I had to jump out, wait for it to become LUKEWARM again, and proceed to hopefully wash my hair.
NOPE. COLD AGAIN IN ABOUT 2 MINUTES.
Even worse, it almost seemed as if water was running out because instead of coming out in light waves, I was getting SPLUTTERS of water DRIPPING from the shower head. Literally. Dripping. How the hell am I supposed to shower with DRIPPING water? Please do enlighten me hotel staff.
At this point I was already severely pissed off and cold, not to mention feeling tired and miserable. And I was most certainly not going to go visit reception with my half washed hair.
So in the end, I had to wash my hair in the sink. Because at least the water from the sink tap was hot. Wait no, not hot. Fairly warm is how I would phrase it.
I mean, fucking seriously? I’m not even here for leisure, I am here for WORK. And this is the kind of shit they book me into when I am here to WORK??! Also what kind of shitty place can call themselves a “HOTEL” if they can’t even provide basic humanitarian necessities such as a HOT SHOWER FOR EXAMPLE?
After rinsing my hair (not so thoroughly) in the tiny sink, I decided to call it a night and just read a bit of my book before going to sleep with the intent of raging at reception the next day to get my shower repaired.
—
Day 2 of Hotel Hell
First thing I did the next morning was go complain to reception about the lack of hot water in the shower. It was a different lady on this morning and she didn’t seem too happy with my complaints. I said this simply won’t do and requested that she get someone to take a look at and fix it, and if not possible, move me to a room with a working shower. She said okay so I said “there’ll be hot water when I get back right?” and she said “yes” so I dropped the subject and went for breakfast.
Breakfast was nothing special, I got my english breakfast as usual since I don’t trust eating anything else in this hotel and I just had tea and some orange juice, nothing out of the ordinary. Then I left for work.
At work, (obviously) I had to complain to my boss about the horrific hotel. And of course, he had to take 5 million years to reply with “phone the hotel and if they can’t guarantee you hot water, you can move elsewhere”. Which is not good enough for me so I decided to book another hotel for Wednesday night regardless of whether they gave me hot water or not (because I was 99% sure they won’t be able to).
AND GUESS WHAT. I WAS FLIPPING RIGHT.
First thing I did when I got back to the hotel on tuesday night was check the shower. No hot water and even worse, the water stopped coming out earlier than the night before. Unacceptable. I left the main taps running for 20-25 minutes but only got lukewarm water so I went down to reception to rage about it, since the one from the morning had guaranteed to me that it would have been fixed by now. And the girl asked if I really “had to take a shower”.
………………..
ERM YES? I’D LIKE TO WASH MY HAIR THAT I DIDN’T GET TO THE PREVIOUS NIGHT? WTF.
So yes after replying that I was adamant to take a shower, she finally gave me keys to another room with a working shower because she had TESTED it.
……………..
OMG.
SHOULD YOU NOT TEST THE ROOM THAT A GUEST IS STAYING IN TO MAKE SURE THE SHOWER WORKS? A GUEST WHO ALREADY COMPLAINED LIKE 478657465 TIMES?!
I cannot believe this.
Not only that, but the new room was on the OTHER side of the hotel. It is literally a 5 minute trek through the complicated corridors to the far, back end of the hotel. And I was NOT going to lug my suitcase through the stairs and other nonsense just for one night because I was going to check out and go elsewhere tomorrow anyway.
But thank god, the new room did have a working shower. Sadly the room itself had mould growing on the window area so I was keen to get out asap.
—
Day 3 of Hotel Hell
Technically the 3rd day was more of a hell-ish day in general rather than to do with the hotel but I blame the hotel because if I didn’t have to check out and move into another hotel, I would not have missed my carpool to work and I would NOT have to walk 1 hour and 30 minutes to work.
Yes. I walked to work. I work in an industrial estate for engineering and I had to walk from the town center. HOW MORE NIGHTMARE-ISH CAN THIS WEEK GET?
Anyways back to the main topic, we checked out and got a refund for the wednesday night because of all the shower problems because apparently we had to call before 12 noon the day before we check in to cancel a room without paying the fee and my BOSS HAD GOT BACK TO ME TOO LATE FOR THIS TO WORK DESPITE ME CALLING AT 1PM TO THE HOTEL.
So we lugged our stuff out this disastrous place and walked down to the Tudor Inn which was our hotel for the night and was 10 minutes down the street. Of course, it had to rain.
After dumping our luggage with the friendly lady at the inn, we tried to call a taxi to work.
Nope. Not happening. Apparently there was a big accident on the motorway so all the cars were diverted through Warwick town center. Let’s just say Warwick isn’t exactly big and the roads are cramped as hell, just as one would expect from an old English town. The streets were probably designed for horse carriages at most back then so there’s really barely any room. Add about a million more cars to the usual queue at rush hour here and you’ve got one hell of a huge traffic jam.
I called 5 different taxi companies. They were either:
a) not operating until the afternoon
b) will take 1 hour to 1 hour and 30 minutes to provide one
c) do not have any taxis because they are stuck in the traffic queue due to the accident
Wow so fucking useful. In the end I looked up the nearest railway station and we walked there (around 30 minutes) and hoped to flag a cab that was stationed there since it was raining and we really didn’t want to stand outside the hotel doing nothing (you can’t check in till after 2pm).
Thanks to Google maps navigation we managed to arrive at the railway station only to find out all the station taxis were currently stuck in the same traffic jam. Oh god. And there were already 2 poor souls sitting waiting at the office because of this. The taxi guy recommended we walked to work instead since the industrial estate was “only” 1 hour walk away.
Dear lord, why must you punish me like so? I haven’t done anything bad lately. I don’t think I deserve such horrors happening to me.
So anyway another poor soul came in after us with the same problem except he was going to the Warwick technology park for a meeting which was like 20 minutes shorter walk than hours but was in the same direction anyway so we ended up walking with him.
One hour of walking. In the rain. While wearing my flat white shoes. With a random stranger (who albeit ended up being quite a good chat and was pretty nice). This must be divine punishment or something for some sin I committed in a previous life probably.
You might be thinking, “the fuck would you inflict such pain on yourself and walk to work? You should have just waited for a taxi even if it took 2 hours!”
Unfortunately for us, the operations manager for our division was coming into the service center today. I MEAN, REALLY? TODAY? AT WARWICK OF ALL PLACES? AND IT HAD TO BE THE 1 WEEK WE WERE THERE? REALLY? REALLY!?!?!?
WHAT WERE THE CHANCES? COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT.
AND GUESS WHAT????
US WALKING THERE GOT US THERE BEFORE HE DID. WE GOT THERE BEFORE THE SERVICE CENTRE MANAGER WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO GIVE US A LIFT IF WE DIDN’T HAVE TO CHANGE HOTELS DID.
SO IN THE END OUR REASON FOR WALKING ALL THE WAY TO WORK WAS INVALID BECAUSE THE REASON HADN’T EVEN ARRIVED AT THE CENTRE THEMSELVES.
…..
Now you see why this is so clearly a nightmare and not just a horrible work trip.
AimoAio 